FIRST LOOK FESTIVAL
Museum of the Moving Image / New York January 9, 2015.For four years now, the Museum of the Moving Image in New York has been showcasing a slate of ambitious new movies in its First Look Film Festival. But this year, the fest is also showcasing another sort of moving image, one that’s usually confined to a much smaller screen: GIFs.

THE INVASION HAS BEGUN
Spaces Gallery / Cleveland OHNovember 14, 2014 - January 16, 2015.SPACES is being invaded by protesting ants, politicians, and early renaissance paintings that take selfies and eat hot dogs. In this collection of .gifs and video works, the artists have introduced a humorous element to an otherwise serious situation, achieving an unsettling effect.

Milos Rajkovic, a.k.a. Sholim, whose GIFs feel like a Max Ernst collage crossed with one of Terry Gilliam's animations from Monty Python's Flying Circus. In Manager, most of a man's head has been replaced by a birdcage lined with money; in the middle of a cage, a tiny brain runs on a hamster wheel. In Skinner Box Head, holes in a man's face reveal that he's a machine—and in the center of the head, where the brain ought to be, a chicken pecks repeatedly at part of the mechanism. Sholim loves to open people's skulls to reveal contraptions as complicated as any Rube Goldberg cartoon, but while the typical Goldberg machine is a ridiculously elaborate means to accomplish a simple goal, Sholim's creations spin purposelessly forever.

ZALET ART FESTIVAL / Zajecar SRB August 7-10, 2014.

One Minute Portraits by Sholim exposed in
showcase of department store

The work of Serbian artist, Milos "Sholim" Rajkovic, was once described as "Freaky GIFs You Will Never Forget," and we might have to agree. His work looks like a mad scientist's twist on Magritte's The Son Of Man, aspoliticians, corporate workaholics, and models from your average infomercial get their faces removed and replaced with a spotlight on their inner gears and levers (literally, gears and levers replace bones and veins). While the GIFs were clever (and maybe a little unsettling), the artist has one-upped himself, as his work has been cleaned, polished, and enhanced with an audio element.

The “animated collages” of Milos “Sholim” Rajkovic's are amazing. And props to iO9 for the best headline of the week: “Animated portraits of surreal cyborgs are whimsical nightmare fuel.” That covers it.